


Between San Francisco and Upstate New York

by thunderdone



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: And im right about him being trans, And then immediately blue screens, Angst, Between Episodes, Jacobi being trans isn't addressed byt just know that he is, Kepler Has Feelings, Kepler is southern, M/M, Trans Daniel Jacobi, but we don't talk about that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24767515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderdone/pseuds/thunderdone
Summary: Kepler learning to compartmentalize the last emotion he has (until Day 1202 of the Hephaestus Mission).
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi & Warren Kepler, Daniel Jacobi/Warren Kepler
Comments: 8
Kudos: 36





	Between San Francisco and Upstate New York

**Author's Note:**

> I love the fact that Wolf 359 shows no real romantic relationships, it's one of my favorite things about the show. But also. Mmm tasty trying to get better at writing and writing more diverse cha re after relations.
> 
> Edited a lil because none of my fuckin italics stayed :(

Flagstaff, Arizona, 2012

* * *

Jacobi always drives. No matter how much Kepler may insist that they should look into recruiting a professional driver, or that he's the one that finds the backroads easiest of the two of them, and it takes more work for him to shout directions over the sirens, Jacobi is the one who drives. He needs it.

He was an addict from it the moment he set his feet to the pavement the first time after a drive. He became an addict to it in the same way he quickly became an addict to the feeling of explosions, the methods and the wires and the lights and the sound, which chipped away at his hearing bit by bit, sure, but made his heart race so much faster and his smile feel so much wider. The adrenaline, whether driving or blowing shit up, was the same. Maybe a little less, but it waned him off the harder stuff; the explosives. It gave him time to come down from his high without going cold turkey. And he needed it.

His music pounds ( _his_ songs that _he_ chose) as they race down the pitch black highway. There was a speaker in the door, perfectly where his calf pressed it, and the bass rattled against him, buzzing the seam of his jeans. At this point, after tonight's business, he has no idea how loud the music is, but he feels it through the steering wheel, and he can feel what little hearing he has left screaming at him to turn it down, that he's in pain, but he doesn't listen. Of course. He's driving. They're alone. What does it matter?

The core of their vehicle shook (he swore he felt it wanting to come apart; for a wheel to spin off, for the others to follow it and for the car's momentum to just keep them going, sailing through the air until they got to their hideout). It'd be just his luck if it happened when he finally got to choose the music. In the back of his mind, he made a note he knew he would forget, or at the very least not care enough to remember, to check the engine, maybe the breaks. See if anything there was causing the tremors.

There's a friendly orange sign that blinks into being by the side of the road. He barely has time to read it: 'Please don't speed.' Jacobi's heart drums in his ears as he presses his foot down just a bit harder, watching the speedometer sail past eighty miles an hour. _Let's see if this tin can will stay together now._ He could laugh, if he also knew their lives weren't at risk every minute he stayed on the road.

"Mister Jacobi." The voice is low. The car goes silent. Jacobi suddenly realizes that _someone_ turned his music off. It's the only reason why he hears him now. "Are you aware that we are not, in fact, being pursued anymore?"

A beat passes.

"Yes sir, I can see that. Thanks," he mutters through gritted teeth. There aren't even the faintest stars of headlights in the desert behind him. Even that sign asking, _pretty please don't speed down this straight, empty, very speedable road,_ isn't in his mirror.

"And you are, then, aware that given our current speed, if there are any police out tonight that see us, our cover will be completely blown? They will pursue and pull us over?" His tone is terse, slow, and unwilling to hault, demanding to be heard all the way through to the end. "Which will mean, either, we have more blood on our hands, or with, at the very least, someone who has a record of our faces and-"

"Sure. Yeah."

Jacobi could punch him. In his voice he can just hear the arch of an eyebrow, the way his mouth slinks toward the Blunt Force Trauma face. "Sure," he mutters again, as he takes his foot off the gas, allowing for their car to coast at its current speed, and to slow of its own accord. "Now can you turn the radio back on?" 

He watches as the shadow of Kepler's chest crawls back again, and has to restrain himself from rolling his eyes to the back of his head, _anything to eliminate some of the ways he has to experience Kepler right now_. "According to the timetable, we would be at the hotel in fifteen minutes. But, considering the speed you elected to take, we should be there in three. You can make it."

He wants to twitch, to scream, to do something. He just needed these last few minutes to go fast and hard. No thinking, just acting and instinct and wearing down all the adrenaline he could.

But no. The car has slowed back down to sixty miles an hour, the radio is not on, and there's silence. All he should be caring about was, the fifty miles an hour, and the blip of a small hotel in the distance, nestled at the edge of a piss poor excuse of a town. The only thing he _could_ focus on was the ringing in his ears and the forty, thirty, twenty five miles an hour before, _safe_ ; they were parked.

* * *

Jacobi's arms curled around a fat hotel blanket, clutched to his bare chest. Even though he was sound asleep, with his body moving in gentle waves, his breaths continuing to deepen, in and out, he was as solid as ever; tense, almost aware. The scars on his body shone in the moonlight just as they did in the sun, just as alive and demanding for care, covering his throat, a bicep, a shoulder, wriggling up and down. Pushing out of his skin like roots of a tree that would not be felled, they kept his past and his stories sewn into his skin.  
  
Every now and then, Jacobi's fingers would tense, curl, inward and creaking, then relax. The movement began with just a twitch, with some single nerve firing off once, all alone, not enough to clench the whole finger. And after a few individual nerves twitched, they would get together, and curl inward, holding, paranoid. Before they regain peace, uncurling. Perhaps it was a dream which caused them, the contents of which necessitated his quick movements. After all, who doesn't have the occasional work-based dream (or nightmare).

Maybe Jacobi was mumbling too. It was low, and the movement of his cheeks was subtle, but there. It may not even be mumbling, perhaps just words formed but never spoken, thoughts joined without a resolution.

His hair was a bombshell, still in the process of bursting, as usual. Curls spread up against the pillow, springing out from the sides, most of the orange dye (addes when Kepler had insisted they could not celebrate after the last mission in the manner which Jacobi had wanted to) almost completely dulled out at this point. The power he got from that night, from the dye and the freshly trimmed mohawk, meant a lot to him, even if he never talked about it. His poker face may be good, but the way he cocked his chin a little extra when staring someone down, or the few seconds he took just to look to the mirror from the corner of his eyes gave him away. The moments didn't last, they were barely present. But if you knew him like Kepler knew him, it was obvious tell, he was bleeding his hand.

Kepler thought that if he placed a hand to Jacobi's back, pressed it right between his two shoulder blades, with his middle finger parallel to the limping line of his spine, he would wake up. Jacobi would wake up with a start and scowl at him and say, "Hey, what was that for?" or, "Why'd you do that?" It would come out slower than usual, a little bit muffled, too.

And then Kepler would say something, and smirk for just a little bit "too long"; just enough to make Jacobi roll his eyes and turn over again, his back to Kepler again. Jacobi will be infuriated, and he will not care. And Kepler won't say he cared.

Jacobi's been asleep for three hours. It's three in the morning, and Kepler hasn't slept yet, not that it's bothering him.

He tries to distract himself, to roll over, watch the ceiling. There's a jackknife of moonlight splitting across the popcorn stucco ceiling. The curtains couldn't close all the way, no matter how he tried and tugged at them. They couldn't be completely private (no, "couldn't" wasnt the word; "hadn't been" and "were not" were both more accurate) or completely alone.

He felt himself wonder if maybe that's what they needed. If that was what he needed. For something really to happen between them, what would it take?

Sure, they've had their late night rendezvous, on nights like these, at the end of a mission, sprawled together, hearts racing, unable to get the feeling of a trigger out from underneath their fingertips. _Alone_ on the job was different being alone though. But what if, _what if_ , maybe, someday, things could slow down. They quit this job, they stop these missions, they begin to learn who they are again, other than blood and filth and whiskey and dark shadows not meant for the light of day.

He remembers liking the mountains as a child, the feeling of the snow crunching under his boots. It was nothing like the desert they were in now; sure, sand and snow spun around the earth, coated indiscriminately anything in their way. But the snow always held more danger to him, more fun. Maybe they could move up to where there's snow, where there life was still work and danger and staying alive. They could have a cabin. A home that wanted them dead just as badly as this job did.

Kepler looks back to Jacobi, cheek hot against his pillow. Would he even come with him, if he asked one day? His gaze trailed down his arms, to the little bit of his chest that still peeked out from the blanket, to the way his skin pinched and knitted itself together from where it had been blown apart. Jacobi was a man firmly rooted in the city, he needed it the same way he needed the adrenaline of a good mission. Could he even come with him? Were they already too far gone? Too plugged with adrenaline for anything resembling a normal life to have any meaning to it?

Would Jacobi even want to have it any other way?

That question he could find an answer to. Even if it wasn't what Jacobi would call an answer, it would be all that he needed. Kepler watched as his fingers curled again in his sleep, squeezing together. And he made a call.

Jacobi could just be sound asleep. He may not notice. He probably wouldn’t notice. While they were both SI-5, trained beyond recognition of their former selves, Jacobi had always been a bit more... resistant. Emotional. He lingered where he shouldn’t, he hesitated even when prepped for everything and anything they could run into. Loss still hurt him. So maybe he still had some emotion about him. Still some bit of... him. Left. Maybe this idea wouldn't work, but he'd be damned if he didn't try at all.

He takes his calculated, exhausted risk. So maybe less calculated than normal. 

Rolling over slowly, he looks back to Jacobi’s face; his eyes are still shut, barely twitching. Maybe he wasn't quite sound, but at the very least he was asleep. Kepler inched closer, body feeling awkward, too small as he rested on his shoulder, before slowly he wrapped an arm around Jacobi, over his side. His hand barely touched him, until he found a place for it: right over his sternum, in the middle of his breastbone.

The scene broke immediately. In a flurry of movement, Jacobi was up, knee pinning one of Kepler's wrists to the mattress, the other wrist pinned down with his unburdened hand. Jacobi's other hand was against Kepler's throat, knuckles brushing his pulse as he held a small, subtle knife to his throat. A switchblade, the one that he always had on him during missions.

His eyes were wide, teeth bared mercilessly. In a different light, at a different time, maybe a couple hours ago, even, he wouldn't feel the surge of fear through his veins. If he wasn't so tired and wasn't so emotionally downtrodden from the idea he could have maybe, _just maybe_ , grown back into a human, he would put an end to this foolishness. If he wasn't so tired, who knew, Jacobi's head could have been pushed, slammed hard into the dresser knocking him out cold. Or something else could have happened between them (again).

But the weariness in his body stopped him.

Kepler began to try to speak, to say something, anything to make him _stand down, Jacobi_ , a familiar order from a familiar man, right? His voice, through the darkness, would make him pause. Right? Yet Jacobi interrupted him, spoke right over his still forming thoughts.

"Oh, it's just you."

Of his own accord, Jacobi moved back around, sitting beside Kepler, legs folded as he checks his knife for blood, before pulling it away from his throat. He flicked it back into its little sheath, before laying back down. Kepler could now see the shine from between his fingers, the way he gripped it hard, then released.

Rendered still, Kepler tried to catch his breath, fill his head with those rational, strategic thoughts again. None of that pansy, "we could have a life together" nonsense. None of that "we could maybe be more than work friends" or "we could break down our compartmentalization together". He just stayed still, silent, trying to find where all of those sensical thoughts went.

"So, did I pass?" Jacobi says, deadpanned, laying down with his back facing Kepler again.

He has to clear his throat, pressing a hand to where the knife just was, feeling, in the back of his mind, the cool metal still there, his blood pounding underneath it. "With flyin' colors. As always, Mister Jacobi," he murmurs, hands resting over his stomach, tired enough so even those last dregs of his old southern drawl couldn't stay hidden.

**Author's Note:**

> Beep boop my tumblr is parkspurr


End file.
